The resolution continued “Standing Committee considers that Bishop McIntyre’s earlier appointment of a practising homosexual to a ministry office and his May 18, 2012 statement represent –
(a) a departure from the teaching of Scripture,
(b) a departure from the Lambeth Resolution I.10 of 1998,
(c) a departure from Faithfulness in Service §7.4,
(d) a breach of the Australian Bishops’ Protocol agreed to by all Australian bishops (including the Bishop of Gippsland) in March this year,
(e) a breach of trust and fellowship at a profound level which deeply grieves us.

The distinction between positive and natural law, of course, is not always easy to make. We are not free to simply dismiss the outward at will. Consider Nadad and Abihu who apparently thought positive law was this kind of fire and natural law was just fire. Things did not go well for them. One way we can know the difference, however, is when the Bible itself calls for the change. Jesus said the bread was His body broken, the wine the cup of the New Covenant. Jesus told Peter to eat the pork. This is the same Jesus who told us that not one jot or tittle would pass away from the law. Jesus is the same yesterday, today and tomorrow. His natural law reflects not only the nature of things, but His own unchanging nature. Circumstances may change. Our Lord does not. Neither then does our obligation to obey whatsoever He commands.

Pornography promises orgasm without intimacy. Video warfare promises adrenaline without danger. The arousal that makes these so attractive is ultimately spiritual to the core.

The answer to both addictions is to fight arousal with arousal. Set forth the gospel vision of a Christ who loves his bride and who fights to save her. And then let's train our young men to follow Christ by learning to love a real woman, sometimes by fighting his own desires and the spirit beings who would eat him up. Let's teach our men to make love, and to make war . . . for real.

So what is it then? What is masculinity? Simply put, masculinity is the glad assumption of sacrificial responsibility. A man who assumes responsibility is learning masculinity, and a culture that encourages men to take responsibility is a culture that is a friend to masculinity. When a culture outlaws masculinity, they soon learn that such outlaws are a terrible bane to them, instruments that destroy civilization with their mutant forms of masculinity. Every society needs masculine toughness, but it needs a toughness that lives and thrives and is honored within the boundaries of the law. And if we want this kind of toughness in the men, we have to teach it to the boys, and cultivate it in them. Like a concrete foundation, masculine toughness has to lie underneath masculine tenderness.

I did poorly here and I can see that I need to grow in my ability to critique the ideas in a book even while being kind and loving to its author. There was reason for the shame I felt when I saw that name in my inbox. I had put effort into reading the book and understanding and critiquing it, but no real effort into showing love and respect for the author. I had assumed poor motives and in arrogance and thoughtlessness had squelched useful discussion of the book’s strengths and weaknesses.

Friday, May 25, 2012

He added the problem with an Atheist insisting on a fundamentalist interpretation of Scripture to a non-fundamentalist Christian is he the atheist in a sense has to put on the hat of a Fundamentalist Religious Apologist and try to convince his opponent to adopt a view of Scripture both already reject before turning around and offering an Atheist criticism of the Fundamentalist view.

Anglican Bishop of Bathurst Richard Hurford and Catholic Bishop Michael McKenna will sign the covenant which will commit the two dioceses to:
• an annual ecumenical service;
• a bienniel joint clergy day;
• local services to enliven common witness to our baptism in Jesus Christ;
• exploring possibilities for sharing church plant and resources;
• cooperation in preparation for Christian marriage and Christian education; and
• openness to fellowship with other ecclesial communities.

“Well,” he explained, “it’s a group of men who are active in your life, that care for you enough to challenge you when you fall into sin. They watch out for you, support you, encourage you to grow in grace and wisdom.” “In that case,” I retorted, “I do have an accountability group. It’s just that I call them my friends.”

Friday, May 18, 2012

It is a slippery slope argument, but this one might be true. After all we live in a secular country, all voices should be allowed: That Seamy Chain of Syllogisms:

The reason why homosexual marriage won't end the debates (and the hate crimes of those who take up the wrong side of the debate) is that these marriage "reforms" clearly have not solved the problems of the bisexuals. With our arbitrary limitation of marital status to two and only two people, we are plainly telling the bisexual that he must choose between a heterosexual marriage or a homosexual marriage, but that he can't do both. "But I am both!" he wails . . . suppose this poor little buster wants to express all of his sexual yearnings within the holy bonds of matrimony, and the clerk down at the county courthouse, just seething with hate, won't give him a license with a place on it for three signatures. And then the Muslim guy, next in line, wants one with a place for four signatures.

Among the Dead Sea Scrolls, scholars found fragments (and, in some cases, fuller scrolls) of every biblical book except for Esther and Nehemiah. Until now. Torleif Elgvin (Evangelical Lutheran University College, Oslo) and Esther Eshel (Bar Ilan University, Israel) will be publishing a collection of more than two dozen previously unknown scroll fragments, including the first known fragment of Nehemiah.

Krauss’ aim is to answer the question “Why is there something rather than nothing?” without resorting to God—and also without bothering to study what previous thinkers of genius have said about the matter. Like Richard Dawkins, Stephen Hawking, Leonard Mlodinow, and Peter Atkins, Krauss evidently thinks that actually knowing something about philosophy and theology is no prerequisite for pontificating on these subjects.

1 Corinthians is a book about the cross. And like with Romans, we've tried to summarize the book in a series of tweets that we'll be posting on Twitter throughout the day. As long as we've got social media, let's use it to help one another live in the power of the cross, a day at a time.

Wednesday, May 16, 2012

For all those reasons, leadership is not about style or technique as much as it is about character. Want proof that effective leadership is not just about style? Notice that a number of divergent leadership styles are modeled in Scripture. Elijah was a loner and a prophet; Moses delegated duties to trusted people whom he kept close to him. Peter was brash; John was tenderhearted. Paul was a dynamic leader, even when being carried about in chains. He influenced people primarily through the force of his words. Evidently, his physical appearance was anything but powerful (2 Corinthians 10:1). All were men of action, and all used their diverse gifts in markedly different ways. Their leadership styles were varied and diverse. But all were true leaders.

Again, I think it’s a serious mistake for Christians in leadership to pass over these biblical examples of leadership and turn instead to secular models in pursuit of style-obsessed formulae they think will make them better leaders.

Horton assumes that if we object to feminine traits in the wrong place, then we must somehow be bothered with then in the right place too. "Are we really ready to identify shallow sentimentalism with 'feminization' of the church? Do godly women want this any more than men?" I quite agree. Of course they don't. Godly women don't want girly preachers any more than the men do. Godly women don't like femmy worship any more than the men do. Godly women don't want the worship of the evangelical and Reformed church to get any gayer. I mean to say . . .

Must baptism precede membership? Yes. I'd even say, of course! I suppose it is possible you could have an extraordinary situation where the order might get reversed by a few weeks. Getting the order right is not a matter of ontological or salvific necessity, per se. But yes, it generally must precede it, because of what these things are. Baptism (and the Lord's Supper) is the mechanism that Jesus has given us for declaring someone to be a member of his body, and this happens among real people in a real place called the gathering of a local church.

In spite of this widespread view on the historical relations between science and religion, historians of science have long known that religious factors played a significantly positive role in the emergence and persistence of modern science in the West. Not only were many of the key figures in the rise of science individuals with sincere religious commitments, but the new approaches to nature that they pioneered were underpinned in various ways by religious assumptions.

Monday, May 14, 2012

I begin here: this is simply the best discussion of the roles of a married couple I have read. A robust theology — christology and trinitarian thinking — is every where and it avoids simplicities that seem to find their way into discussions of roles. So here are some points from the chapter

Hundreds of hours of footage was shot and edited down to 90 minutes of solid debate and conversation. The clip you see above didn't make into that 90 minutes. Consider it deleted scenes. This is the first time it's being released, and we have it here for you to learn what it means and looks like to make a defense for your faith.

I drew up a list of changes, and did my best to ponder what other churches in my hometown (Lake Wobegon, of course) were like … and I hope the following list represents a fairly accurate set of characteristics and changes. This is not really a journey into nostalgia but an exercise in comparison. But here goes, in no particular order of importance:

Monday, May 7, 2012

But that belief is contradicted by experience. Couples who cohabit before marriage (and especially before an engagement or an otherwise clear commitment) tend to be less satisfied with their marriages — and more likely to divorce — than couples who do not. These negative outcomes are called the cohabitation effect.

...the speakers were asked this question in connection with the ongoing debate between Christians who think the universe is less than 10,000 years old and those who think it is much older. Dr. R.C. Sproul took about five minutes to answer the question, and what he said in that brief period of time should be heard by every Reformed Christian who is interested in this subject and by every Reformed Christian who is discussing and debating it.

Bottom line, whatever you think has defined “Christian music” up til now, you can forget it: “We don’t limit our bands to the Christian cul-de-sac of U2 circa 1987,” says Dunn. [Editor’s note: Said with all due respect to Joshua Tree and U2, who have a solid contingent of fans at the church.] In short, it’s a label defined by Christ and culture and corporate worship.

"Your parishioners listen to other preachers on the radio, watch them on TV and on the Web, and download pdcasts to their iPods. Like it or not, you are not the best preacher that your people have listened to this week. Your congregation has compared and contrasted you with the best-known preachers of the day . . . People in the pews want the electronic perfection projected by the religious superstars of our day. And we cannot give it to them. The electronic media have made it easier to compare preachers today than ever before" (Edwards, Deep Preaching, p. 6).

In the work of the Greek historian Herodotus, impalement is regularly presented as a Persian punishment (see The Histories, 1.128, 3,132, 3.159, 6.30 as examples). Given the setting of Esther, it thus seems likely that the manner of punishment for Haman was in fact impalement. In other words, the fifty-cubit “tree” built by Haman was intended to display Mordecai’s body impaled in such a way that no one could avoid seeing it. As it turned out, however, it was Haman, whose death (and the folly leading to it) was put on display for the entire population. This view is also confirmed by both recent commentaries (by Jon Levenson, for example) and by older commentaries (Keil and Delitzsch). In this case, I think the TNIV and the NLT to be more correct in their translation than the ESV or the NASB.

Scott McNight on Chandlers book on the Gospel. One day soon I am going to read his King Jesus Gospel (I've bought it, I just need to open it when I am finished with a few other books I am reading at the moment): The Gospel of God’s Glory:

So he begins as does all the soterian gospel approaches (see my book, The King Jesus Gospel, for soterian approaches) — with God, and with “man,” and with Christ and with response, which means his gospel looks like Greg Gilbert’s (What is the Gospel?) and, to be honest, much like every soterian gospel from the days of Billy Graham and Bill Bright onwards to our day. But Chandler’s approach is not the same, and I’d like to emphasize here that these four elements in the typical evangelistic presentation are essentially biblical and important elements in the doctrine of salvation, even if there are a variety of ways of expressing them.